


neither sweet nor bitter

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Ben Hanscom is just a Good Dude, Dogs, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Canon violence, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Bev goes home with Ben.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	neither sweet nor bitter

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those "I'd like to write something exploring what could have happened after the end of the movie" things I started writing directly after seeing the movie... and then still took a year to finish.

"You sure about this?" Ben asks, when there's only one more person left between them and the security checkpoint.

"I'm sure." Bev squeezes his hand, then hands her plane ticket and ID to the guard.

*

"So this is Nebraska," Bev says, as they wait for the shuttle to take them to long-term parking in Omaha.

Ben ducks his head a little as he laughs and his cheeks pink; it's very cute and Bev slides her arm through his and leans against him. He's solid and warm, welcome after the chill air of the plane. "I promise it's prettier than this," Ben says. "It'll take about an hour to get to my place, and you'll see. It's gorgeous."

"You're gorgeous," she replies, just to watch him flush more.

*

He's not wrong about the drive. They'd taken a late-night flight, the last out of Bangor, and the sun is just starting to break over the horizon as they clear the last of Omaha's city traffic. Ben drives a hulking pickup truck that says _Hanscom & Associates_ on the side, and he seems at ease in the leather seat with one hand on the steering wheel, not looking at all like a man who's been awake most of the night.

"You can sleep if you want," he says, reaching over with his free hand to wind their fingers together. 

"I'm all right." 

"I called the housekeeper before we left Derry and she went over to air out the place, so we can climb right into bed, sleep as long as we want." 

Bev lifts their hands and presses a kiss to the back of his. "That sounds perfect."

*

Even knowing Ben's an architect, his house is nothing like Bev imagined. Open, glass-walled squares, with mountains behind it. There are no other buildings she can see anywhere around, just light reflected off the huge windows. "How did you-"

"I didn't build the whole thing myself," Ben says, chuckling. "But I wanted to be able to feel like I was outside, no matter the time of day or the season." 

Bev thinks of the dreary grey winters in Chicago, of the snow that was beautiful only while it was falling, of the streets lined with dirty slush. She can only imagine that here there is endless, pristine whiteness. 

"All the wires and cables are underground," Ben is saying, "and there's a generator just in case - that rectangle there." He points as he drives the truck around to what Bev assumes is the back side of the house, then pushes a button on the edge of the rearview mirror. A hidden door rolls up, revealing a two-car garage, and he parks the truck inside. Bev sees a neatly organized woodworking bench on the opposite side. 

"I don't have any major projects right now," Ben says. "So we can take our time."

Bev knows what he's really saying is, _Take our time getting better_.

*

For the first time in years, she doesn't dream, and when she wakes up and realizes there'd been no blood or death, tears well up in her eyes and slide hotly down her temples, wetting the pillow beneath her head. It's relief more than anything. After a moment, she sits up, and finds she's alone in the huge bed. The space where Ben had slept is still warm, though, and there's a robe laid across the foot of the bed, presumably for her. She slips it on over the borrowed t-shirt.

She takes her time finding Ben in the house; they'd gone to get some sleep almost immediately upon crossing the threshold, and she hadn't looked around. But now she looks through every open doorway, and around every open door. There's a library and what's probably an office, a dining room and a room with a comfortable-looking leather sofa positioned in front of an extensive entertainment system. She tries to picture Ben stretched out on it, relaxing, and cannot. 

Ben's in the kitchen. He looks up at her and smiles when she raps her knuckles lightly on the doorframe. "I smell coffee," she says.

Ben points at a gleaming espresso machine. "Feel free. I was just going to do some toast, if that's okay with you?"

"It's perfect. What time is it?" The sun is up, high somewhere in the sky, but that's all Bev can figure.

"Almost three-thirty. I guess our sleep schedules might be messed up for a while." He drops a few slices of bread into a toaster that matches the espresso machine, and depresses the lever. 

Bev looks at the espresso machine for a moment, then grabs a nearby cup and slides it into place. This is close enough to the one they kept in the office, and she doesn't need to make anything fancy. A straight shot of caffeine is probably all she needs to clear the lingering fog. 

Ben's hand slides lightly over her shoulder before he moves close, a gentle indication that he's stepping into her personal space. That, too, is a relief. They'd slept in the same bed this morning, but only slept, and Bev had been the one to initiate a kiss before falling asleep. She's barely said anything about Tom, but somehow Ben seems to know not to move too quickly, to avoid startling her. "Hi," she murmurs, drawing his arm around her waist. 

"Hi. What would you like to do with the rest of our day?"

She looks up and out the window. "Could we go for a walk? It looks like the weather's nice."

"Sure. There's a nice walking path through the woods, I run it a lot."

"Maybe no running today," Bev says, feeling a smile crack her face. "I think it might take a couple days to stop feeling so sore."

"Yeah." Ben kisses her shoulder through the t-shirt, then squeezes her gently. "Your espresso is done."

*

"Don't you feel like we're hiding out from the world?" Bev asks, as the late afternoon sunlight moves through the trees, alternately illuminating the path ahead of them and leaving it in shadow.

"I tend to feel that way here, yeah." 

"Is that why you built here?"

Ben ducks under a low-hanging branch. A stick snaps under his boot. "Now that you make me think about it, yeah. It's far enough from anyone else that I can feel like I'm the only person in the world, if I want; but if I want to go sit at a bar and have a beer while other people play all sorts of shit on the jukebox, the nearest place is about a fifteen minute drive."

Bev can picture that: Ben in his jeans and plaid button-down, looking like every other guy in the place. "Do you do that often?"

"Once a week or so. I don't keep much alcohol here; I don't like drinking alone."

That - makes sense, actually. Bev nods. "How long have you been going there?"

"Couple years now." Ben tucks his hands in the pockets of his jeans. A few twigs crack under his boots. "Bevvie. What is it about Chicago you don't want to go back to?"

She scuffs her tennis shoe against some fallen leaves. "You really want to hear the whole shitty story?"

Ben nods, his expression serious. He doesn't try to take her hand, which Bev appreciates right now. "My husband, he - he got jealous. Even when there was nothing to be jealous of." 

She tells him the whole thing: how great Tom was at first, how they'd been great together, how he'd run the business brilliantly so that she could concentrate on the designs. How he'd taken that sudden possessive turn, thought she was cheating on him. "I went from having half a dozen good, close friends - people I'd go out to dinner with after a long day, girlfriends I could go shopping or get coffee with, that sort of thing - to having two, to having none. He alienated me from everyone and I didn't even realize it until he tried to stop me from leaving. I just… I thought he'd get better, that we were both stressed about work…"

She shakes her head, mostly at herself. "I see now how stupid I was."

"You weren't stupid. You wanted to believe the best of him." Ben bumps their arms together lightly. "And I've got about six lawyers, so. I can help. If you want."

"I'll probably have to file in Illinois." Bev sniffs, hot tears welling up in an instant. "Fuck. Sorry-"

"No, don't apologize." Ben's hand brushes her face, hesitant and gentle. "Here, let's just sit down for a second."

They sit down on the leaf-covered path. Bev puts her head on her knees and cries.

*

Ben swears he can make dinner, insists Bev sit at the kitchen counter on the other side and just watch. "I've been cooking for myself for years, I can cook for both of us," he says, opening the refrigerator. "Kim brought groceries when she came to clean, so we're stocked up. Looks like… chicken? Salmon? Vegetarian? There's some sort of potstickers from deli in here, too."

"Vegetarian. I should have said."

"Nah, we weren't thinking about that." Ben leans down, opens the crisper. He emerges with an arm full of produce bags. "How about a stir-fry sort of thing?"

Bev nods. She looks at what he lines up on the counter. "Are you sure I can't help?"

"I'm sure."

Bev wants to kiss him then, wants to reach out and pull him down, fit their mouths together. But she also wants to wait. She wants to be sure. "Ben."

"Yeah?"

"You have a girlfriend here?"

Ben shakes his head. "No. It's been, ah. A while," he answers, and breaks a few stalks from the celery. "About a year. I had to go to Germany for two months, and…" 

He shrugs. "She had other options."

"I'm sorry."

Ben shakes his head. "No, it is what it is. I'm gone a lot. I can do a lot of the planning from here, take some meetings over video, but I go out to survey on every big project we do before the drafting starts, and then regularly during construction."

The change in topic is clear, so Bev goes with it. "What are you working on now?"

"A shopping mall," he replies, chuckling. "I was actually on a conference call for it when Mike called me. It's in Phoenix. I keep fighting with the developer because he just wants to add more stores, more retail space." 

Bev watches him shake his head at this, then start slicing carrots into thin coins. "No one goes to malls just to buy shit anymore," Ben continues. "They can do that online. You need places where they can get a cup of coffee or a meal, where they can sit down and work on their laptops if they want to, or hang out with their friends. Endless rows of stores don't cut it."

"Our brick and mortar stores do best in the places where there's more than just retail," Bev says. Then she stops cold, and has to take a deep breath. "God, I-"

"Pretty sure my lawyers are better than Tom's," Ben says peaceably, sweeping the carrots into a bowl. "You just tell me when we should call them, okay?"

She runs her thumbs under her eyes. "You're too sweet."

"Nah, just trying to be a decent human being." He gets another bowl from the cupboard. "You should know that internally I am struggling with a very strong urge to fly to Chicago and break his face with my fist."

Bev can imagine that, and in detail. Then she feels bad about how good it feels to think about. The thought must be evident on her face, because Ben gives her a knowing look and says, "Hey, I think it's very fair to at least daydream about some gross bodily harm, even if neither of us would do it for real. And it's only human, really."

"We did kill an ancient clown from outer space," she says, thoughtfully. "I think that might have used up my capacity for violence."

"Me, too. But there is a punching bag in the basement, if you need to imagine a little more."

Bev pictures that; Ben methodically working over the bag, probably in a tank top of some sort. It's a much better daydream than the one a moment ago. "Is that part of your exercise routine?"

"Every morning I'm home. And running." 

"I used to run a lot. Before work got too… hectic." Her mind slides, sideways to that time, but Ben's hand gentle on her shoulder pulls her back to the present. "It's a good way to get out of your head for a while."

"Exactly. You know I used to have these moments where I'd just feel - unsettled, I guess? Now, after-" he gestures, and Bev knows he means _after how we just fought the space clown again_ , "- now I know that was my mind still processing what we went through as kids, even though I couldn't remember much of it."

"You remembered me," she says softly, and Ben smiles. It lights up his whole face, and Bev knows for certain that coming here with him was the right choice.

*

The doorbell rings early the next morning, and when Bev looks out the window, she sees another Hanscom & Associates vehicle in the drive. She hears Ben open the door, hears him say, "Hey, buddy, hey bud!" and then there's a loud bark, like from a dog, and some laughter.

"Bevvie," Ben calls, after another minute. "Come meet my running partner!"

"Sit, Frankie," she hears him say as she walks through the library to get to the foyer, then, "Good job."

Frankie is a German Shepherd seated at Ben's feet. Their tail thumps furiously against the wood floor as Bev approaches. "Hello," she says, slowly holding out her hand for the dog to sniff. "Boy Frankie or girl Frankie?"

"Boy."

"After Frank Lloyd Wright?" she guesses, and Frankie licks her fingers before pushing his muzzle against her palm. Ben grins sheepishly. Bev strokes Frankie's head and his tail bangs against the floor even faster. "He's very happy."

"He likes new people. And he had to stay at Simon's, which he tolerates, but Simon has one of those little yappy dogs that run all over like crazy, and Frankie thinks he's too good for that."

Frankie lets out a little howl, like he understood Ben's words. "But I'm back now," Ben says to him. "And Kim bought your favorite snack at the store, so no complaints."

Frankie gets up and leans his body against Bev's legs as she pets him, his tail still going a mile a minute. "I guess you've been deemed acceptable." Ben says it with a grin, and pushes his hair up where it's fallen forward onto his face. "He'll love almost anyone who pets him, though. Not the best deterrent against burglars."

Frankie lets out another _hoo-woo_. "That's right, I said it, you're a bad theft-deterrent system," Ben tells him. "I guess it's lucky for you we live way out here. Don't knock Bevvie over."

A picture of Ben comes fully formed into Bev's mind: in the big Hanscom & Associates truck, driving through a construction zone, Frankie in the passenger seat with his head stuck out the window. "I love him already," she says, leaning down to kiss the top of the dog's head.

*

The next day, Bev can't get out of bed. She tries - she makes it into the bathroom to pee, and the urge to lie down again floods her system, so she brushes her teeth while promising herself that's all she has to do, then crawls back under the covers.

Ben comes in some time later, Frankie with him. "You okay, Bevvie?"

"I'm offline today, I think," she manages to reply. There's no better way to describe it. 

"You want Frankie to keep you company?" he asks, after a few moments of silence. 

Bev nods. She feels Frankie jump up onto the bed, turn around a few times, then settle down as a warm weight next to her legs. "I'll bring you up some lunch," Ben says. Bev feels his hand skim lightly over her arm as she closes her eyes again.

When she surfaces next, it's to realize that Ben's drawn all the curtains in the bedroom tightly, and there's a plate with a sandwich on the table beside the bed. The bread isn't dry when she touches it, so it can't be too late. Frankie stirs beside her, and rests his head on her knee. Bev eats the sandwich and drinks the glass of water Ben also left. She gives Frankie the last crust of bread, then strokes her fingers along his nose. "You guys get lonely out here, just you?" she whispers, and he makes a whuffling sound and sticks his head back under her hand.

*

"Should we go somewhere else?" Ben asks, after the third morning he finds her awake at dawn and watching the sun rise through the huge windows. Bev feels him step up behind her, and reaches for his hands so that she can pull his arms around her waist.

"Like where?"

"I have a little place in Pismo Beach, right on the ocean, and a boat. We could road trip there with Frankie - or we could fly - and take it out. Drop anchor somewhere and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist for a while."

Bev needs to hire a lawyer, or several, and start the process of getting a divorce from Tom, and from their business. But that feels so far away right now. And Tom has no idea where she is. "I bet the weather's lovely in California."

"Eighty-five and with a breeze." He presses a gentle kiss to her shoulder. 

"I think that would be nice."

*

Bev lies on the sun-warmed deck of the houseboat, her face turned up towards the sky and her eyes closed, and feels like she's an entirely new person, like she's shed her skin and what she's made of now is alight in a way she never remembers feeling before. Beside her legs, Frankie is asleep, his tail twitching occasionally and bumping against her feet. It tickles a little each time. Ben's still below deck; he mumbled something about coffee when they rolled out of the bed fifteen minutes ago, when sunlight cutting through one of the portholes had hit the right angle across their faces to wake them up.

"Bevvie, coffee?" she hears him call up through the hatch. 

"Yes, please."

Wispy, fluffy clouds are drifting across the sky. They remind Bev of the mounds of tulle she used to dream of using in the evening gowns she used to dream of designing, before everything was crisp workwear for professional women. She enjoyed the challenge and geometry of it, but well-tailored suits weren't what her heart had been set on, all those years ago. 

Well, now she can design whatever she wants. 

"Behind you, babe," she hears Ben say, followed by his bare footsteps on the deck. Frankie raises his head for a second, then settles back down, ears twitching. Bev sits up and takes her cup from Ben's hand. He sits down behind her, so she leans back against him. "It's nice, huh," he says.

"It is. You are." 

He presses a kiss to her bare shoulder. "I'm glad we decided to fly and not drive."

"Me, too. It's got to be a couple days by car, right?"

"At least two, depending on how often I stop." Ben tucks a loose piece of hair back behind her ear. "I do it a couple times a year if I can. There's a guy here who keeps an eye on the boat for me, rents it out sometimes, and we let employees use it."

"That's nice of you."

"I don't like it to just sit in the dock. It's meant to sail." He stretches his legs out along the warm deck. "You feel better this morning?"

The strange cloud that's been following her the last few days seems like it's lifted. "I think so. Maybe I just needed even more distance between me and… everything." She drinks some of the coffee, then runs her hand over Ben's arm where he's curved it partially around her waist. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For letting me be weird. For just… being present. For letting me touch you whenever I want but not asking anything of me in return." Bev squeezes his wrist gently. "The whole time we were in Derry I felt like everyone was freaking out - me included - and then I'd look at you and you just seemed so solid, and unflappable."

"Um, I'm sure I was definitely freaking out a couple times." He kisses her shoulder again. "Maybe more than a couple."

"You sure didn't look like it." 

She feels his laugh more than she hears it. "I guess I did a good job of hiding it," he says, turning his body slightly so he can take a sip of his coffee. "But definitely, some freakouts."

*

The boat is rocking slightly. Bev's got her hand in Ben's hair, and Ben's got his mouth on her, and she feels like she might melt right off the deck into the ocean. The sun is shining down on them and it's warm but not too warm, but the backs of her knees are still slick with sweat. Ben mumbles something and she shivers at the vibration, can't make out what the words actually are. Bev flexes her fingers in his hair. "What, babe?"

"You want to stay, right?" he asks in a rush. The feel of his breath against slick, sensitive places makes her shiver again. 

She does want to stay. She wants to let Ben's lawyers deal with Tom, and never go back to Chicago again. She wants to design dresses with miles of tulle.

"You can do all those thing," Ben says, turning his head to kiss the inside of her thigh. 

Bev runs her fingers through his hair again. "Then I will."


End file.
